Author Topic: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!  (Read 6508 times)

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Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #50 on: September 27, 2023, 12:00:24 am »
Presumably most of the 500GB drives out there were produced a long time ago.

~2010

Quote
25/09/2010:
qty=6, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB, €44,90/each
qty=2, Sharkoon SATA QuickPort Intern 3-Bay, €65,90/each
...

I bought my first six Barracudas new in a physical store in 2010.

My first self-built NAS!!!

I was a university student at the time, almost graduated, spent all the scholarship to build a bloody complex thing made with three GNU/Linux embedded SBCs based on PPC in a matter that could very well become a story for Netflix, as it was so rich in twists, and it took almost 12 years to get it working properly! I redid everything, from the firmware, to various parts of the Linux kernel, to the entire rootfs, and today that thing is a war machine...

... even if ... it grinds no more than 20Mbytes/sec, node to node, but still at the low level it encrypts every disk in the pool in hardware!

Something that in 2010, no one, absolutely no one, thought they could do... today... both the Chinese and the Taiwanese will throw it into your head almost for free.

Those Barracudas have seen a lot of Linux history in the last 12 years, from kernel 2.6 to kernel 5.5 (sorry, no time for kernel 6.*) including thousands of kernel crashes, kernel panics, or, even worse, filesystems that have evaporated leaving only a shapeless mass of meaningless data in their place, so many bugs and problems with the PPC4xx platform.

Exactly what should never happen in a NAS, but it was never the fault of the disks. It was always the fault of the software, of uboot which didn't initialize the PCI well, and of the kernel which had big bugs under the hood.

And they survived! All the Barracudas are still in good shape, and perfectly working. They have always been housed in a self-ventilated Sharkoon 3-Bay box, and have never worked above 22C ambient temperature, physically hosted in the cellar, "my computer room", with various bags of salts that absorb humidity.

Hey, oh? So, respect for Barracudas  8)
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Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #51 on: September 27, 2023, 12:16:54 am »
Quote
13/06/2017:
qty=4, Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM, €54,90/each
qty=1, Icy Box IB-2226StS for 2x SATA 2.5", €35,90/each

This is my second purchase in the same physical shop, and these disks went into a commercial NAS RAID box that accepts SATA disks up to max 1TB and exports them to a SCSI interface.

I no longer found the same box, but recently, a few months ago, by pure luck on eBay I saw and bought the previous version on the fly, which instead accepts disks up to a max of 512GB

And that's why I got those 512GB Barracudas. I actually only needed 4, I took 8 to use the other 4 in a second project.

Even these 1TB Barracudas never had a single defect in 5 years of service!

If you say that the Hitachi are better, that's fine with me, I must have been just lucky with those disks, but then I need a precise reference, a model or something to look for  :-//
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Offline vad

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #52 on: September 27, 2023, 12:56:31 am »
The failure rate curve of hard drives typically exhibits a bathtub shape. All other things being equal (no bad blocks, no SMART errors), drives that have been sitting on a shelf unused for 13 years are likely less reliable than those with several thousand hours of use. This is due to the risks associated with child mortality, in my opinion.

I wouldn't buy used HDDs on eBay, but in this situation, there's no technical reason to keep drives with zero hours and return used ones.
 
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Offline Veteran68

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #53 on: September 27, 2023, 01:01:02 am »
So Hitachi is the best.
Umm, which Hitachi model of 500Gb do you suggest?
NAS application.

Before I switched to QNAP NAS appliances close to a decade ago (which I love BTW), I built and ran my own dedicated NAS boxes on a Linux mdraid platform using external eSATA enclosures driven by multiport PCIe eSATA cards. My last such NAS had 16 external eSATA bays filled with 500GB Hitachi drives. Crazy that's only 8TB compared to today's drive sizes -- my current 6-bay QNAP NAS is filled with 14TB WD Gold datacenter drives. The 8-bay QNAP it replaced was filled with 3TB Toshiba drives.

Anyway, I just dug through my old HDD tote to see if I still had any of those 500GBs left. I did find one (there may be more, but most are 1TB or 3TB as I think I got rid of most of the 500GBs). These are the ones I used in my NAS. This was soon after IBM dumped all their HDD manufacturing to Hitachi and they still used the Deskstar branding.

 

Offline vad

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #54 on: September 27, 2023, 01:38:28 am »
So Hitachi is the best.
Umm, which Hitachi model of 500Gb do you suggest?
NAS application.

None.

Paying around 40 Euros per terabyte for those rusty 500GB Seagates is quite expensive.

Instead of using eight 500GB drives, you can opt for two 4TB WD Red Plus CMR drives, which would cost about 20 Euros per terabyte. These drives are brand new and come with a manufacturer's warranty.

If you plan to run the drives 24/7 in your NAS, you should also consider power consumption. HGST drives are power-hungry, idling at 5W or higher, whereas the WD40EFPX idles at 3.1W.

Eight HGST drives would consume 350 kWh per year, while two Red Plus drives would consume 54 kWh per year. I'm not sure about the efficiency of your NAS's PSU or your electricity costs, but saving 300-400 kWh or so per year would reduce your carbon footprint.
« Last Edit: September 27, 2023, 01:40:00 am by vad »
 
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Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #55 on: September 27, 2023, 10:53:08 am »
Instead of using eight 500GB drives, you can opt for two 4TB WD Red Plus CMR drives, which would cost about 20 Euros per terabyte. These drives are brand new and come with a manufacturer's warranty.

If you plan to run the drives 24/7 in your NAS, you should also consider power consumption. HGST drives are power-hungry, idling at 5W or higher, whereas the WD40EFPX idles at 3.1W.

Eight HGST drives would consume 350 kWh per year, while two Red Plus drives would consume 54 kWh per year. I'm not sure about the efficiency of your NAS's PSU or your electricity costs, but saving 300-400 kWh or so per year would reduce your carbon footprint.

The NAS that I built in 2010 is a bit particular, it's made up of 3 nodes, each based on PPC40x, managing each a pair of disks in soft-RAID-1 (2xnode=2x3=6 disks), provided by a SiliconImage PCI chip. The nodes are controlled by a little SBC that is always online, consumes less than 5Watt, monitors the network traffic entering the NAS, if it notices a request for one of the three nodes that is offline (off), forces a softboot to the node, and in less than 12 seconds (bootstrap time) it satisfies the request. Similarly, if it sees no activity on a node within 40 minutes, it requests shutdown and turns off both the node and the hard disks connected to it.

Periodically (during night) also forces the bootstrap of the mediatower, and also organizes backups according to different levels. From daily backups, on DDS tape, to weekly backups on CDRW, to monthly backups on DVDRAM

Code: [Select]
.          _______
          |       |
network === ctrl0 |                     _______
          |       |                    |A      |--- sata.ch0----- hdd0
          |       === lan0 & uart0 === | node0 |--- sata.ch1----- hdd1
          |       |                    |_______|--- pata_ramdisk
          |       |                    |B      |--- sata.ch0----- hdd2
          |       === lan1 & uart1 === | node1 |--- sata.ch1----- hdd3
          |       |                    |_______|--- pata_ramdisk
          |       |                    |C      |--- sata.ch0----- hdd4
          |       === lan2 & uart2 === | node2 |--- sata.ch1----- hdd5
          |       |                    |_______|--- pata_ramdisk
          |       |                     _______________
          |       |                    |D              |
          |       === lan3 =========== |  media_tower  |
          |       |                    |   SCSI        |
          |       |                    |   + ramdisk   |
          |       |                    |   + media     |
          |       |                    |     + DVD-RAM |
          |       |                    |     + CDRW650 |
          |       |                    |     + DDS-4   |
          |       |                    |_______________|
          |_______|
             |
             | uart4
          ___|__________
         |              |
         |  power unit  |
         |              |
         |              |
         |      12V,5V ---- group.A { node0, hdd0, hdd1 }
         |      12V,5V ---- group.B { node1, hdd2, hdd3 }
         |      12V,5V ---- group.C { node2, hdd4, hdd5 }
         |      5V_TTL ---- group.D { media_tower } (ATX poweron)
         |______________|

Code: [Select]
.       ___________
       | bay0      |
       |     ______|_
       |    |  hdd0  |------ node0.sata.ch0
       |    |A_______|
       |    |  hdd1  |------ node0.sata.ch1
       |    |A_______|
       |    |  hdd2  |------ node1.sata.ch0
       |    |B_______|
       |___________
       | bay1      |
       |     ______|_
       |    |  hdd3  |------ node1.sata.ch1
       |    |B_______|
       |    |  hdd4  |------ node2.sata.ch0
       |    |C_______|
       |    |  hdd5  |------ node2.sata.ch1
       |    |C_______|
       |___________|

Through an internal 1000Mbps Ethernet line managed by a pair of Tulip chips (with dedicated network processors and queues, but limited to 20Mbyte/sec) the data flows from the disks of one of the three nodes to the SCSI ramdisk (8GB) of the mediatower, only then does the backup begin.

That NAS basically manages source archives in C and assembly, as well as vhdl, latek and txt files, vector files and some pictures, all things that never exceed 10Mbytes per file. I have developed software to track updates, so ONLY what ( = a project) has changed is backed up.

A 4GB DVDRAM fits perfectly into my monthly archives.

Made with late 90s and early 2000s tecnology, it had a troubled and controversial start, but this system has been working perfectly for 5 years now.

Why 3 sets of disks? Because things are compartmentalized into 3 big categories, which must NEVER be online at the same time, this is due to my paranoia.
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Offline vad

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #56 on: September 27, 2023, 11:38:49 am »
Wow, that's impressive. Good luck with your project!
 
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Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #57 on: September 28, 2023, 09:39:41 am »


Quote
I wouldn't buy used HDDs on eBay, but in this situation, there's no technical reason to keep drives with zero hours and return used ones.

I made a second call to customer service, they replied something similar again.
So if the category is not "new", but "opened never used", it is not a problem for them if the disk has service hours unless the disk is actually "DOA".

The girl on the phone said exactly that, asking if one or more HDDs were "DOA?", "Dead On Arrival?"

as a corollary I conclude that
  • on eBay, "opened never used" can be returned only if DOA, next time you have to say that in the motivation, item not as description because not working
  • It's better to buy on Amazon, selective purchases, you need 8 disks? you make eight different orders, so you can selective return defecitve parts, otherwise you have to return everything; if something goes wrong Amazon doesn't make any question, you return the disc, and they'll refund you. Point
  • It is better to pay directly sellers with Paypal, without going through eBay, which in the end only adds more costs and hassles
  • the best solution is to find a serious dealer, like the mentioned Pitbull-something for SCSI parts, and pay him/her with Paypal.

« Last Edit: September 28, 2023, 10:20:44 am by DiTBho »
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Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #58 on: September 28, 2023, 10:05:06 am »
except the last 5 years when I use the NAS regularly, the 13-5 years before that my HDDs were used periodically but not continuously over the time. Say, 4 days nonstop, then unused for a couple of months, then again 1 week continuously and unused for another couple of months, and so on.

So, you know at least that they are not "dead on arrival".

The failure rate curve of hard drives typically exhibits a bathtub shape. All other things being equal (no bad blocks, no SMART errors), drives that have been sitting on a shelf unused for 13 years are likely less reliable than those with several thousand hours of use. This is due to the risks associated with child mortality, in my opinion.

What would be the problem with an HDD that remains unused for 13 years?
You know, you tested it for a couple of days after purchasing it, and it showed no problems.

The mechanical parts? like the engine bearings?
The electric parts? are the contacts between the driver and the motor and/or sensors oxidising?

In road bicycle hubs the problem is the grease between cones and spheres which "cements" (it hardens). All you have to do is dismantle everything, degrease, put the grease back in, and the hub runs like new again.

Unfortunately you cannot do the same with an HDD, because it must be opened in a dust-free environment

« Last Edit: September 28, 2023, 10:25:46 am by DiTBho »
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Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #59 on: September 28, 2023, 10:06:10 am »
Found this article:

Quote
Hard Disks Don’t Die Young Anymore - Aug 2, 2022

The old hard disk drive is disintegrating in space. Modern Hard disks are more reliable than their reputation suggests

“Infant mortality” in hard disks has become a thing of the past, according to online backup firm Backblaze.

Backblaze has more than 200,000 hard disks being used to store customers’ data and regularly reports on the reliability of individual models. The latest report shows that traditional spinning hard disks are nowhere near as fragile as their reputation suggests.

Only three of the 27 models of hard disk reported on by Backblaze had an annualized failure rate of over 2.5%. But all three of those models had a low sample size, meaning Backblaze couldn’t be more than 95% confident of the failure rate.

The overall annualized failure rate of all the disks in Backblaze’s study was only 1.46%. Although that’s up slightly from previous years, the company says this is due to the increased age of its fleet, not diminishing reliability. In short: hard disks very rarely fail, especially in the early years.

Eradicating bad drives
How do the disk manufacturers achieve such low failure rates, with many of the disks in Blackblaze’s fleet now being in active service for five or six years? Backblaze’s Principal Storage Cloud Evangelist, Andy Klein, puts it down to improvements in manufacturing.

It used to be the drives, just like everything else mechanical and electromechanical followed a bathtub curve”, he said. The bathtub curve sees relatively high “infant mortality” in the early life of a disk, before settling down, only for failure rates to climb again as the disks age.

What we've seen over the last several years now is the front end of that curve is almost flattened out”, said Klein. “And you see the backside start to push a little bit. So where the failures started to rise after two and a half, three years, now the rate doesn't start to rise until you get to about four years.

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Klein believes the early failure rates have been largely eradicated due to better testing of new models by the hard disk manufacturers, who are putting new drives through more intensive tests before putting them on sale.

Getting a DOA [dead on arrival] drive happens a lot less”, said Klein. “I can’t recall our guys talking about that at all in the last year or two.

Using AI to predict failures
With drive failures becoming increasingly rare, Backblaze has been experimenting with AI models to predict when drives in its fleet may die.

Although such AI models have had some success, the problem is they don’t easily translate from one model of hard disk to the next. “Every new model creates a different set of characteristics that you have to go and track down”, said Klein.

However, one model created by a third party did identify the characteristics that will show when a drive is likely to carry on working normally for the foreseeable future.

To have that kind of knowledge is kind of interesting,” said Klein. He said that if the company can deploy a drive and know that “under this set of circumstances, it's got a 99% chance it's going to survive a year, that's a good thing, I'm feeling really good about that.

That might allow the company to delay maintenance on a particular server, or not replace a disk that would normally be expected to be reaching the end of its lifecycle.
(from here)
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Offline Veteran68

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #60 on: September 28, 2023, 12:43:51 pm »
Yeah I referenced BackBlaze and their HDD reports earlier. I trust their data and conclusions, they've been doing this a long time and have been quite transparent about the details and what's worked and what hasn't. I would certainly *hope* that things have improved over time, so I'm encouraged that failures even among Seagate is better than it used to be. Fortunately I rarely deal in HDDs anymore, and when I do they tend to be datacenter class drives for the NAS. All of my desktops/workstations and laptops are 100% SSD. Even my current NAS has 2x 1TB NVMe SSDs for caching.
 
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Offline Shock

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #61 on: September 28, 2023, 04:39:43 pm »
Based on the logic as presented, I'm avoiding Amazon and Western Digital.
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Offline Veteran68

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #62 on: September 28, 2023, 08:53:21 pm »
Based on the logic as presented, I'm avoiding Amazon and Western Digital.

I've never had an issue with either. Don't believe I've ever had a WD drive fail. I'm currently running 14TB Gold data center grade drives in my NAS, but I have run all classes of WD drives before (Green, Black, Blue, Red). Hitachi/HGST and Toshiba were my preference, but I'd also use WD. Then as I recall WD bought up one or both of those, so all my picks are now WD of some flavor.
 

Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #63 on: September 29, 2023, 05:43:47 am »
My 2010 disks are ST3500418AS
Some bad disks are ST3000DM001
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Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #64 on: September 29, 2023, 06:21:28 am »
In this specific case, 6 HDD are always needed for the NAS multi node project: with which modern HDDs can I replace the 6 discs from 2010?

I don't want to deal with SSDs

I'll definitely have problems like this
  • SATA2 would be better as the SiliconImage chip is SATA2, all modern stuff is >SATA2
  • it would be better not to manage more than 500GB, because then the internal partitions (mac-part) are max 20GB, and if the disks are over 1TB, there are definitely too many ... anyway, tthis means, that I am right to take a modern disk but with the smaller capacity possible
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #65 on: September 29, 2023, 06:42:29 am »
  • it would be better not to manage more than 500GB, because then the internal partitions (mac-part) are max 20GB, and if the disks are over 1TB, there are definitely too many ... anyway, tthis means, that I am right to take a modern disk but with the smaller capacity possible

Alright, but if > 1TB disks are easier to get ahold of, can't you just use only 500GB of them (even if that's wasteful) and leave the rest unpartitioned?
 

Offline DiTBhoTopic starter

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #66 on: September 29, 2023, 09:55:32 am »
leave the rest unpartitioned?

I simply said that the criterion is to choose a modern disk with the smallest capacity possible.

I also have a technical problem: the SiliconImage s/ATA chip internally uses 48-bit LBA, but on a 32-bit PPC40x whose hardware encryption engine works best when blocks are 32-bit LBA, so I'm using 48-bit LBA stripped down to 32-bit, which simplifies a lot of things, but gives problems on disks larger than 2.2 terabytes.

Is it possible today to buy a modern 1..2Tbyte HDD and no bigger than that?  :-//

It's a detail of both the firmware (u-boot/iBSP pre-initialization) and the software (linux/kernel drivers), I can fix it, but this will introduce up to 20% performance penalties on an already slow system, as nodes are clocked at 133Mhz.

The alternative is to give up the hardware disk encryption, disable the circuits in the PPC SoC, bypass the block, and go back to using LBA-48bit.
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: eBay's purchase protection program doesn't really work!
« Reply #67 on: September 29, 2023, 10:00:29 pm »
leave the rest unpartitioned?

I simply said that the criterion is to choose a modern disk with the smallest capacity possible.

That's understandable, but if such things are not available, you kinda have to do with what is.

Is it possible today to buy a modern 1..2Tbyte HDD and no bigger than that?  :-//

Absolutely. Seagate, WD and Toshiba have brand new 1TB SATA HDDs in their catalog. I looked and they are available in many stores.
SAS drives are a lot harder to find. HP still sells new, 500GB and 1TB SAS drives, but they are rather expensive. Not sure about other sources.
 
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